


Daily

by elleorwhatever



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5755048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elleorwhatever/pseuds/elleorwhatever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen does not yet trust the Herald of Andraste, but discovers they have more in common than he realized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daily

It was very early.  The stone floor of the chantry was slightly icy and every breath was a fog.  The morning chant hadn’t begun.  The soldiers were running laps and would not require his attention until practice.

Biting into a meat pasty, Cullen studied the war table.  It just wasn’t enough.  They could paper the walls with all the reports of new rifts opening across Thedas.  They could fill the whole chantry with the blood spilt by the rebel mages and templars.  The Inquisition was teetering on a precipice between total condemnation by Val Royeaux and being barely tolerated.  Their actions with the Hinterland refugees had helped popular opinion, but he couldn’t fight hordes of demons with an army of farmers.

As it was, his green recruits vastly outnumbered the skilled warriors.  It was _trying_ , to say the least, to spot every slip-up, every side exposed, every bit of shoddy footwork…  He’d even consider mercs at this point. But that would require coin.  

He bit again into the pasty, sighing.  He needed soldiers.  Coin. Information.  Armor.  Weapons.  Supplies.  Allies–

“Aaaawwaaarggghh,” said Cullen, lurching forward.

“Oh! What are you standing there for?”

Cullen clutched his back where the door just hit him.  He turned around.

The Herald stood looking at him with two steaming mugs and an astonished expression.

“I’m sorry, are you alright?” she asked. “You usually stand over there, so I just…”

“I’m sorry, Lady Trevelyan, have I stolen your spot?”

“What? No– ” she stopped herself. “Here.”

She held out one of the mugs, smiling. “Peace offering.”

Cullen took it.  The bright, sweet scent of apples and spices rose from the drink.

“Thank you,” he said. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yes,” Trevelyan said.  She stepped around him to look at the war table. She placed her mug down and pulled a map from her belt, likely the one she used while traveling.  Cullen watched as she unrolled  it.

To be frank, he was undecided about the Herald.  Yes, he had heard the accounts from The Temple of Sacred Ashes.  Yes, she has been nothing but cooperative and dedicated to the aims of the Inquisition.  Yes, she had worked wonders up the length and down the breadth of the Hinterlands.  And yet.

And yet.

There was a part of him, perhaps a bigger part than Cullen felt comfortable acknowledging, that felt uneasy depending on the leadership of a mage.  It shamed him, because he had joined the Inquisition to prevent the things _he_ had suffered from happening again.  And other things that had resulted from his own actions.  That _he_ was responsible for.

But he did find himself sometimes looking at the Herald for signs of possession.  For abuse of magic.  Was it caution or prejudice? Sacrilege?

He didn’t know about this girl being Andraste’s Chosen.  Cassandra already seemed sure of it.  But matters of faith had never come so easy to him.  Not for years, anyway.  Not since he’d been a recruit. And those days… were long past.

“I was hoping you could help me with the route to Val Royeaux,” Trevelyan was saying.

Cullen came back to the present.  He stood beside her to look at the maps.

She pulled the list of rifts toward her across the table. “It’s a bit of a ride to the Waking Sea, so we’re going to be closing all the rifts we can along the way.” She marked these on her map.  She also marked the Inquisition encampments on their route.

“Now. Do you know if any of our agents need assistance?  Anything that we can do on the way?  Someone to recruit, some resource to secure…”

They discussed this for some time, until they heard the sisters begin the morning chant.

The Herald rolled up her map looking satisfied. “Easiest one done. Now, just have to watch for a gap in Josephine’s work to ask _her_ , and somehow find Leliana this evening.”

“ _I’m_ the easiest one?” Cullen asked.

She looked up. “Yes…?  Your schedule’s always the easiest to predict.”

“Really?”

She really looked at him this time, furrowing her brow and tilting her head.

“You haven’t noticed?” she asked. “We’re both still on Circle schedule.”

Cullen opened his mouth, then closed it.  It was true.  The daily life of the Circle began earlier than it did here in Haven; mages and templars both attended morning service.  Both he and the Herald tended to be up earlier than anyone else.  They would pass one another in the food tent, out in the training yards.

Lunch was earlier in the Circle than in Haven; he and the Herald would often be finished eating before anyone else.  The Circle had evening services; Haven did not.  He and Trevelyan would both wander to wherever there was the largest congregation of people, feeling listless.

In the Circle, most mages would be up late studying or working on projects; it followed that templars would also stay up late to watch them.  He and Trevelyan did work several hours after dark when the rest of Haven was either in the tavern or at home.

She was smiling at him, at whatever expression he was making right now. She was quite pretty.  Well, more than just “quite” or even just “pretty.”  And honestly, it _was_ one of the first things he noticed about her.

He cleared his throat. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

She nodded, tapped his arm with her map. “Thanks for this.  Send on any reports if we’re needed somewhere.”

“Of course, Lady Trevelyan.”

“Commander.”

She left.  Cullen looked at the war table.  They did not know each other well, but in a way he _did_ know who the Herald was.  They had been living the same hours, the same daily patterns, for years.  By her actions alone, he had every reason to trust her.  She was not Uldred.  She was not Meredith.  

And, she had even less reason to trust him, than he did of her. Considering his past.  If he was to ever escape those years, he would have to relearn trust.  He would have to have faith.

Now. How to kill all the blighted demons falling out of the sky.  With farmers.


End file.
